The Tiny Bang Story (2011)

Intro

This is a puzzle game in which you have to find interactible objects, find related objects and complete mini-games and puzzles.

Review

The game started out in a tiny window. Enlarging it moved it to the upper left corner. Even Borderless Gaming didn't work. Eventually somehow this corrected itself, but it is telling. Just like the options menu that just has two volume sliders. Or how incredibly long it takes to get to the main menu. I started clicking everywhere. Turns out, it just takes like half a minute for no reason.

The game itself is just bad. No story. No proper HOPs. Objects require laser precision. Interactible objects aren't indicated. Movement between the first and second screen requires pressing a button, waiting for a door to open then clicking. And this game requires you to constantly move between screens. At some point you have to use a wrench to unscrew bolts. It unselects the wrench after each use for no reason.

If you need any more indication of the incompetence of the developer: Using the hint button requires you to find and click on at least a dozen fireflies moving around the screen. No, i'm not joking. I could go on about the vague numbers puzzle, the bad balloon mini-game, etc. And i've only played this for half an hour! Hard pass.

The Tiny Bang Story is primarily a point-and-click hidden-object game. The bulk of the game is about locating a set of jigsaw puzzle pieces across five levels, and then reassembling them after each level. To collect all of the pieces, you'll need to solve individual puzzles on each level. The individual puzzles boil down to a two options: collect a set of N items, or complete a certain minigame. The puzzles on each level usually proceed in a chained manner, and some puzzles are only unlocked after a different puzzle has been completed.

The Tiny Bang Story uses hand-drawn backgrounds for each level, so they do have a distinct style and are different from one level to the next. The soundtrack of the game is also nice, with a relaxing set of tracks that meshes with the calm gameplay. It is also available for free, and is worth checking out even if you haven't played the game. Here is the URL to the soundtrack.

However, the game is let down by a few problems. The first one is the hint system, which is terrible. To activate it, you have to collect the blue dragonflies that roam around on the screen. Once you collect 30 (!) of them, you get one hint. The flies-to-hint ratio of 30:1 is too high, and considering that you often use it as a last resort, it makes the game unnecessarily frustrating. Minigames and mini-puzzles always have hints, but they vary wildly in quality - from being a direct solution to being completely useless. During my playthrough, I gave up on one of these puzzles and ended up using a guide to get around it.

The second problem comes from the hidden-object nature of the game. Some of the objects blend in too well with the background, and that makes them unnecessarily difficult to locate. The already bad hint system makes this problem worse, and it ended up happening way too frequently for my taste.

In summary, The Tiny Bang Story is an average game. It's not terrible, but it has several issues that prevent it from actually being good. During my playthrough, I was frustrated a little too often, and that spoiled my enjoyment of the game.